


Mistakes

by Revyra



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 14:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15172799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revyra/pseuds/Revyra
Summary: Rex approaches Jesse after Umbara to apologize for letting the execution get so far. Things do not go well, but Rex learns some important things.





	Mistakes

Rex watched Jesse from a distance, a pit in his stomach as he mentally prepared himself for the looming conversation. He had fucked up. He had fucked up so bad. Swallowing against the bitter taste in his mouth, he steeled himself, then headed over to the soldier.

Jesse must have heard him approach. There was no way he hadn’t, not with how jumpy they all still were after Umbara, but he made no move to acknowledge Rex.

“Jesse,” he said quietly.

“What do you want?” Jesse snapped too quickly. The broken comlink in his hand slipped from his fingers and hit the ground with a harsh clang that sent Rex’s heart racing. Jesse snatched it up and went back to work trying to fix it, all while pointedly not looking at him.

Taking a breath to calm himself down, Rex said, “I’m sorry.”

The silence between them crackled with tension. Jesse’s hands had frozen on the comlink, gripping it so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

“I shouldn’t have- I should have stopped the execution.”

A harsh sound left Jesse that might have been a laugh. “You think?” he snapped. “Why would you let it get that far if you knew it was wrong?”

Rex had no answer. Maybe he had been scared, but more likely he had just been blind. Blindly following his loyalty to the Republic in a desperate effort to reconcile everything he saw and did with the values they were told they were protecting. Values that now, he knew with excruciating clarity, did not apply to them.

“You know what?” Rex’s gaze snapped up as Jesse suddenly stood and spun to face him. “Why did you pick them? I know you were the one who picked out the execution squad, so why? Why pick my friends?” Jesse’s voice broke slightly on ‘friends’. Then, seeming to get angrier at his slip of emotion, he snarled, “You could have picked men who didn’t know us. How fucking cruel are you that you’d make our friends gun us down?”

Rex flinched at the words. He had a thousand reasons why, each one weaker than the last, that he’d gone through as he’d picked executioners out. As he’d looked all six men in the eye and ordered them to shoot two of their own. As he’d looked Kix and Tup in the eye and ordered them to shoot their friends.

“I chose them because I couldn’t go against Krell’s orders alone. I had hoped that they wouldn’t execute you because you were friends,” he said slowly, lifting his gaze to meet Jesse’s furious, disbelieving gaze.

“They would have shot us if Fives hadn’t said anything! Why didn’t you tell them to miss in the first place?”

“Dogma would have reported us.”

“Dogma went and told him afterwards anyways!”

Rex’s heart twisted painfully. There hadn’t been much logic on his behalf in the formulation of this plan. Just sheer desperation with too many pitfalls where things could have and should have gone wrong. He’d still been trying to fly under Krell’s radar and support his men at the same time, and now it was blowing up in his face.

“Speaking of Dogma,” Jesse hissed. “Why didn’t you shoot Krell? After everything he did, why did you hesitate?” Jesse had stepped closer, uncomfortably close to Rex. Rex stayed where he was this time, knowing he deserved it if Jesse punched him.

He’d been thinking when he hesitated. Thinking, of course, of the fallout. This had never been done before. What would happen to him, a clone who had shot a Jedi when it was their word against Krell’s legacy as to why they had killed him? They, who had known him for a few days, against the Jedi who had known him all his life? He had been wondering. Would they believe him? What would happen if they didn’t? What would happen if they did?

And now Dogma was learning the answers to all of those questions alone. Rex knew he would be called in for questioning, but ultimately he had no control over what they would do to Dogma. He felt sick, his stomach twisting into knots.

It should have been him.

Rex shook his head to clear it. “I messed up,” he said, his throat tightening.

“Yeah, you did,” Jesse snarled, shoving Rex back before turning on his heel. “I don’t want your apology. If it hadn’t been for me, Fives, and Hardcase, everyone would be dead, and you thanked us with an execution squad.”

Rex watched silently as Jesse snatched up the broken com, then stalked away. The hallway suddenly felt all too cold and empty. Turning, he shivered slightly. Jesse was right. If they hadn’t blown up that supply ship, they would all be dead.

Shit.

Why hadn’t he seen what Krell was doing? He knew better than to dwell on decisions made in the past- hindsight was twenty-twenty after all- but it was so painfully obvious. Fives had pointed it out multiple times, and he’d ignored him.

What kind of captain- no, what kind of person was he that he would make mistake after mistake after mistake at such crucial points? He had failed to protect his men too many times to count over this assignment, but his greatest failure remained seared into his memory, smoke drifting from singed edges of a shot he had not fired.

His pace quickened, as if maybe he could outpace his mistakes. He would not make them again. He would never make them again.

He had learned it the hard way, but now he knew:

One: They were nothing to the Republic. Any idealistic hopes he had held out about mattering were gone.

Two: Though his loyalty was to both his men and his general, his men came first. They would always come first now.

Three: He could never hesitate again. Nobody was ever going to pay for his inability to act again.

Clenching his jaw, Rex set his eyes dead ahead. He needed to apologize to Fives, and then he had to go fix his mistake and raise hell to keep Dogma alive.

Dogma was not going to suffer the consequences for something he should have done, and he was going to make damn sure of that.


End file.
